About a week ago, I was in the kitchen and looked out the window to see this guy hanging out at the pool and another wee face peeking from under the fence. I’d seen the grayboy running around on the neighboring roof a few times over the past months, but it was the first time I’d seen the ginger. It’s not a well-kept secret that I’m a cat person and have been known to take their faces in my hands, scrunch them up and kiss their little noses. This is dangerous business, but the cat I had for twenty years through singleton-ness, marriage, divorce, and meeting/falling in love/moving in with Dennis let me do that, and I was never injured in the process, so, ya know, fond memories. Anyhoo. I understand the theory behind comfort animals. (Altho don’t get me started on the taking of emotional support animals like peacocks on a plane. No. Just no.) After spying these furries in my backyard, I brought out a tiny gray stuffed mouse with a jangly thing inside that I happened to have among the Christmas ornaments. And thus appeared the ginger from under the fence. She grabbed the mouse, gave it a good chew, then absconded with it back from where she’d just come…maybe to bury it or furnish her cat house with. Apropos of nothing, I named her Gladys. Ever since, she’s shown up on the regular and once we got past the part where she tried to drag one of my fuzzy slippers off my foot and under the fence, we’ve gotten to the petting and lap sitting stage of our relationship. No face scrunching. I don’t know her that well. (Gray boy has been spotted roaming elsewhere).

Yesterday, after I’d done my final tutoring session, which felt like the whole semester packed into the last two weeks and I remembered what it was like to go to college and have three eight-to-ten page paper due within ten days, I was rocking in the chair out back, Gladys on my lap, and thinking, wow, I can just sit here for awhile. no obligations. It was both weirdly disconcerting and comforting. It got me to thinking about how being too busy to think about the crazy outside the door can be helpful, yet also disconnecting (that goldilocks thing I wrote about last week comes to mind). Having some fur to sink my fingers into was helpful in keeping me seated for a minute. One thought that crept in was that 2020 has had us all rowing on top of a raging river of stressors. Whatever way we’re individually managing to stay afloat (or fall in, climb back aboard—or not) is maybe something we’ll be exploring in more depth once we land back on solid ground in the next year or so. As much as I’ve tried to pay attention and be present when I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding or realize I’ve been holding my breath for a beat too long, I obviously know why. We’re all in it. Just finding ways to roll through.

Dennis and I have taken up running again. Me, slowly. As if I’ve never run before. It’s truly maddening that the body doesn’t remember that you’ve done five marathons. Doesn’t give a toss. Is basically like, wait, what’s this? are we fleeing from something, cuz unless there’s a bear chasing us, I’m not interested. But even though I’m basically running about the same speed as someone walking fast, still, I’m doing it and despite the not-total enjoyment (yet?), the high point is that it does work as a stress reliever. Something to do with endorphins. The other good thing is finding my way back to my old habit of listening to podcasts to distract myself from the fact that I’m running. But there’s something I’d forgotten about the whole listening thing: I have to pay attention to what I let play into my head or I may end up, as I did yesterday, loping along with tears coming off of my face. I know that’s not a great recommendation for the podcast I’m going to link here, but really it’s worth listening to. The story of Ahmaud Arbery (based on an article in Runner’s World). He’s a man who should still be running the roads except he was murdered last February by two men in a pickup truck who decided he didn’t look like someone who should be running through their neighborhood. It’s 16 minutes long (basically the amount of time it takes me to run a mile these days) and is moving, joyful, tragic, and enraging. Also a stark reminder of one area in America that has been broken open and exposed this year. Very much especially this year.

The man being evicted from the Oval Office opened up a vein of national racism that had been flowing through America’s bloodstream since its beginning. This past year brought an amount of racial bloodletting that those who are paying attention and care about healing the right way rather than only bandaging will be tending to for a long time. As Ibram X. Kendi wrote in The Atlantic, “Is This the Beginning of the End of American Racism?” “[Trump] has held up a mirror to American society, and it has reflected back a grotesque image that many people had until now refused to see: an image not just of the racism still coursing through the country, but also of the reflex to deny that reality.” This work is something I finally understand I have to do ongoing. Something I need to remind myself when I’m tempted to be complacent and look away. Keep my eyes wide open, making sure Gladys doesn’t take the fuzzy slippers off my feet and disappear under the fence so I can keep moving forward.